


Old Soldiers

by romans



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Gen, M/M, ghost story au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 10:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1815871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky didn't survive the fall. Steve didn't survive the crash. That doesn't mean they have to leave Brooklyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Soldiers

"Jesus _Christ_!" Ochoa crows, rocking back on his heels where he's crouched, dangerously close to the fire. "You ain't never heard of _La Llorona_ before? How do you do that? Steiner, aren't you from Texas? What the fuck, man?" 

Steiner shrugs unselfconsciously and holds his skinny hands to fire. The sun dipped behind the Alps an hour ago, and their campsite is rapidly cooling down in the night air. Six months he's been in Ansbach and he still isn't used to the cold. "Guess I never had the right friends," he says. 

"Fuckin' weirdo," Ochoa says. It's mostly affectionate. He settles on his feet and tosses the rotgut across to MacLean.

"You got any _New Yorker_ ghost stories?" he asks, stretching his vowels in an exaggerated accent, and MacLean laughs. 

"Sure," he says. He pauses to take a swig of whiskey. "Got one right in my back yard. Scared the shit out of me when I was a kid." 

"What? Ghosts of the Revolution?" Steiner asks. MacLean shakes his head. 

"Hey, I've got some fucked up stories about the Civil War," Brody says, looking up from whatever he'd been contemplating.

" _Tailypoooo_ ," someone intones, a disembodied voice floating over from the tent. 

"I'm holdin' the fuckin bottle," MacLean says, raising his voice. "Wait your turn, soldier." 

Brody flips him off and settles down on his side, grinning lazily in the firelight.

"Anyways-" MacLean says- "I want to tell you about my neighborhood ghost." 

Ochoa raises an eyebrow, but he settles in to listen. 

"You've heard of Bucky Barnes?" MacLean asks, and they all nod. _Everyone_ at Fort Hamilton knows Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. MacLean scrubs a hand through the blond fuzz on his head. "Right, so he used to live in my neighborhood back in the forties, with Captain America- shut the fuck up, Martinez- anyways, we'd always hear things about him- you know, there's a guy who walks down an alley and disappears, or someone wearing old clothes, or an old soldier sitting on someone's stoop- everyone had a story about Bucky, _everyone_."

"I always thought it was just to mess with kids, you know? I was a fuckin' punk. Didn't believe in ghosts at all. I mean, my sister told me about this guy who held our front door open for her and then disappeared into thin air but-" he shrugs, whiskey sloshing in his hand, "I figured she was imagining things, you know, or fucking with me."

"So one day I'm getting into it with this asshole," he says, and Ochoa snorts. 

"Imagine that!" he says, "You. In a fight."

"Fuck you, I'm telling a story," MacLean says. "So I'm picking a fight with this douchebag when he pulls out a fucking gun. We're in a back alley, it's dark, no one knows where I am and this asshole has a gun. I figure I'm dead. But then-" he pauses for effect- "we hear footsteps. Someone's walking down the alley, in the snow, like there's not a fucking gangbanger executing someone in broad daylight. And we both kinda stop to see who's there, and I figure it's one of his friends, right?" He leans in closer. "But it's not. The alley suddenly gets really fucking cold, which is fuckin' weird because it's already snowing, and this guy is standing there in full-on ninteen-forties army uniform. He's even wearing a fucking hat. And he's just standing there, _staring_ at us like- like I don't even know." 

"So this gangbanger is like, 'What do you want?,' to the guy and I'm convinced we're both dead, I'm not even trying to move. Two bullets, pshsst!" He points at his head, "Done."

"And then this guy says 'Why don't you pick on someone your own size?'- and I'm like 'what the _fuck_ ', right? And then I swear to God, I swear on my momma's grave- the gangbanger goes fuckin' flying and lands facefirst in the snow-"

"You're so drunk," Ochoa says, delighted. "You're so drunk, shithead. Stop shitting us."

"No!" MacLean says. "He tripped over nothing! There was nothing there! And I took off because, you know, what the _fuck_." 

"Jesus," Brody says. 

"And I looked back," MacLean says, "and it was just the gangbanger, sitting on his ass in the alleyway. He didn't even come after me. But the soldier dude was gone."

"Because he was a ghost," Steiner says, flatly.

"Hey, all I know is Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers used to get in a lot of fights back in the day. And my grandpa always said that Bucky's still looking for the Captain, all over Brooklyn."

"He should try the Arctic," Steiner says. "Give me that stuff." 

Brody is looking a little funny, now. 

"You scared?" Ochoa asks. 

"I saw him too," Brody says. "No, I swear. I thought he was some weirdo, you know, in a uniform for kicks, but he stared right through me like I wasn't there."

"Welcome to New York," Ochoa mutters.

Brody shakes his head. "I was down by the docks. He wasn't just staring through me, though. It was like he was having a whole conversation with someone and he noticed me for a second and then he didn't see me anymore. I don't know who he thought he was talking to. Anyways, I looked away for a minute and then he laughed at something, right? So I turn back to look at him and there was no one there. Anywhere. And we were in a fucking parking lot, with the docks on one side and an old boarded-up warehouse on the other."

"Huh," MacLean says. 

"Yeah," Brody says. "I only just remembered because he was shouting for someone named Steve. I didn't figure it out until now. Jesus." 

"Didn't Donner say his dad bought Bucky a drink once?" Ochoa says, remembering scuttlebut from the cafeteria.

"Yeah," MacLean says. "That's gotta be bullshit." 

"Maybe not," MacLean says. "Let's have a drink for old Barnes anyways." 

"May we never end up like him," Ochoa mutters, taking the bottle. 

Fuckin' ghost stories. Whose idea had that been, anyways? He raises the bottle to Bucky Barnes. For some reason, he can't help thinking that Germany is a long, long way from Brooklyn. 

+

 

Annette knows she shouldn't be working late at the studio, but her apartment is a shithole and her roommates are probably drunk again, so working- okay, hiding- in the studio is preferable to trying to ignore one of Dawn and Hannah's boozy nights in. She covers her canvas, stuffs her notebooks into her backpack, and turns off the lights when she leaves, patting the portrait of Steve Rogers that's been hanging by the door for decades now. He's not their mascot, exactly, but he is their most famous student, and she's kind of fond of him. 

Everyone touches the picture; it's speckled paint and clay, and the glass is smeared with the grease of a thousand dirty fingers. Captain Rogers' cool gaze stares out from behind foggy glass. Not many people know what he looked like before the serum, but someone had found a study of him back in the thirties, done when he was a student, and donated it to the school. It's been on the wall here ever since, collecting layers of pigment for six decades.

"Night, Cap," she says. She lets the door slam behind her and pats her pockets for the keys Professor Miles gave her. It takes five minutes of fishing around in her bag to find them, and when she looks up at the door she nearly drops them again. There's a _man_ in the building. 

He's standing on the other side of the door, right where she had been only two seconds earlier, looking at the picture of Cap. She can only see a vague outline of him through the window- dark hair, a full mouth, broad shoulders, all outlined in the tiny rectangle of glass in the door- and she chokes down on the scream that rises in her throat. Someone had been _in the fucking building with her_ and she hadn't even known, Jesus Christ. 

Fuck the lock. She clenches the keys in her fingers, thinking vaguely about the PSAs her mother had emailed her, and walks as quickly as she can towards the parking lot. If this fucking creep had _waited_ for her- 

She doesn't hear the door open behind her, or any footsteps. When she glances back, there's no one in sight. She heaves her bags up on her shoulder and runs to her car, forcing herself to breathe the whole way. 

She can have a nervous breakdown when she gets home. 

Maybe she'll have a little booze, too. 

Jesus Christ. She hates her life. No more late nights for her.

Fuckin' creep.

 

+

 

Lots of people bring flowers by Captain Rogers' memorial on Veteran's Day, but this guy is different. For one, he only turns up once a year. Every July Fourth, rain or sun, he slips into the cemetery and walks over to the Rogers' plot. 

Jerry can't make head or tails of the man's interest in Sarah and Joseph Rogers, unless he's some sort of hardcore Cap fan. Oh, they get flowers sometimes, from thoughtful-looking student types and the occasional old veteran, but for the most part all the gifts go to Captain America's memorial three rows down. It's a regular tourist attraction, always piled high with Bucky Bears and little American flags and bouquets from the local corner store. Jerry takes some of the flowers on Steve's monument and moves them over to his mother's grave, when the piles get a little too high. He figures Cap would appreciate the gesture. He knows that Cap isn't physically in the graveyard, but he still feels responsible for the kid. 

God, how old had he been when he died? Twenty-six? Jerry's seen the carved dates every day of his life, but it still shakes him up sometimes, thinking about how young Cap had been. 

The guy who visits Steve's parents doesn't look to be much older, really. He never shows up on the anniversary of Steve's death, or on Memorial Day. The Fourth, though- the Fourth is a sure thing. Sometimes he has flowers, but today he's carrying a framed photograph. Jerry watches from his office as the guy kneels down, coat dragging in the grass, and props the photo up against Sarah's headstone. Firecrackers are already popping in the distance, and Jerry is steeling himself for a long night of rooting out drunken assholes and stupid teenagers. But for now, he watches the man kneel at Sarah's headstone, head bowed, fingers just touching the photograph. 

He stays until the cemetery closes, every time, and he nods to Jerry as he ambles out the front gate, hands jammed in his pockets. He disappears into the deepening shadows, and Jerry padlocks the iron gates behind him. He detours on his way back to the cottage-slash-office to look at the photograph that's leaning against the headstone. 

The frame is old and battered, and the glass is covered in blotches of paint in just about every color under the sun. The glass is smeared with grease and god knows what else. It looks like something that someone fished out of a garbage bin, and it's not until Jerry kneels down to inspect it more closely that he can make out the painting inside. Steve Rogers stares out at him, skinny and tow-headed, barely visible through the crap on the front of the frame. It's not the black-and-white photograph he had been expecting, or the square-jawed government propaganda some people left at the memorial. 

It's clearly Steven Rogers, 1918-1945, _He gave all for the good of many_ , but he's young, and his mouth is quirked in a smile under his stern gaze. Whoever painted him had used vivid yellows and blues to lay out the planes of his face, put pink into his cheeks, given his eyes startling depth and life in what was really just a quick study, by an unskilled hand. Jerry flips the frame over. 

_JBB, 11-14-1938_ is scrawled on the back of the frame in a shaky hand. 

Jerry puts the frame back beside Sarah's headstone, so that Steven Rogers' bright eyes stare up from his feet. 

Something moves in the corner of his eye, and he looks up at the monument. There's someone perched on top of it, knees pulled to his chest. Jerry sees tousled blond hair, a square jaw, an inquisitive gaze- and then the kid is gone, between one blink and the next. 

He looks back down at the painting, and then, again, at the monument. One lonely flag flutters in the evening light. 

There's no one there. 

Jerry crosses himself, shakes his head, and goes back to his cottage. He has a long night ahead of him. 

 

+

Somewhere in a back alley in Brooklyn, in the shadow of an office that replaced an old worn-out tenement block, Steve Rogers cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of the fireworks. 

Somewhere in a back alley in Brooklyn, Bucky leans against a wall, nurses a cigarette that's more smoke than substance, and smiles.


End file.
